Knoa Software Raises $5.1 Million in Series B Funding; Strengthens Management Team with Key Executives

Proceeds of Financing and Key Hires will Support Company’s Global Expansion as Well as Significant Extension of its User Experience Management and Workforce Optimization Solutions for Enterprise Software Platforms

NEW YORK, July 29, 2014-- Knoa® Software, the leading provider of user experience management and workforce optimization software, today announced that it has raised $5.1 million in Series B funding from existing investors Ascent Ventures, Gefinor Capital, Advantage Capital Partners and Rand Capital. The company also announced key appointments to its management team with Simon Adell joining as Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Sue Spiner named Vice President of Worldwide Marketing.

The follow-on investment and executive appointments will be instrumental in accelerating Knoa’s strategic growth initiatives, innovative technologies and global reach of its software for enterprise platforms.

“Today’s organizations are heavily invested in enterprise software, but lack the insight to accurately measure the real ROI of these systems in key areas such as optimizing end user experience and performance, and application adoption. In collaboration with our customers and partners, we have identified compelling business value in extending our solution to provide organizations with the ability to determine if their software assets are being effectively applied to support organizational goals, and to motivate productive behavior by the employees in support of those goals,” said Brian Berns, Chief Executive Officer of Knoa Software. “With the current funding, and with the support of our highly engaged investment partners and seasoned management team, we are well-positioned to expand Knoa’s position in this vital market through our innovative workforce optimization solutions.”

Simon Adell brings to Knoa nearly two decades of financial management and technology company experience. Prior to Knoa he was Vice President of Finance for Payfone, a leading mobile commerce company, and CFO of iLevel Solutions, a technology spin-out of global private equity firm The Blackstone Group. Adell also held financial management positions for Juice Energy and Covarity.

Sue Spiner joins Knoa with over 20 years of experience as a strategic marketer with emphasis on the development of new business, product positioning, branding, and partnerships for emerging and established technology companies. She has deep expertise in enterprise applications and extensive experience with global integrators, channel partners, and direct sales organizations.

“Knoa has developed the most powerful solution in the space and as a result experienced significant customer growth. This is a reflection of its highly competent team, which knows how to build and scale a successful business,” said Brian Girvan, General Partner at Ascent Ventures. “Ascent is pleased with Knoa’s success and the additional opportunity to participate again in supporting Knoa’s market expansion.”

“At Gefinor, we pride ourselves on investing in winning technologies and teams,” said Mimo Ousseimi, Managing Director at Gefinor Capital. “The combination of Knoa’s leadership and their experience with hundreds of global customers in a growing market represented an opportunity we are excited to be a part of. We look forward to working closely with Knoa as they expand into new markets.”

“We are thrilled with the vote of confidence, as represented by the recent investment by Ascent Ventures, Gefinor Capital, Advantage Capital Partners and Rand Capital; and their guidance as integral members of our team. Their experience and success with rapidly growing companies make them the ideal partners for Knoa at this stage of our technology evolution and market expansion,” Berns said. “The addition of Simon and Sue to our management team has rounded out our leadership skills with highly successful executives with proven track records. I am tremendously excited to collaborate with them, along with all of the world-class talent we have here at Knoa, to continue the growth of the company and extend our innovative solutions.”

At the SAP SAPPHIRE NOW conference last month, Knoa announced the beta version of its Executive Dashboards for their SAP® User Experience Management (UEM) application by Knoa. This solution provides a comprehensive dashboard that enables C-level executives and IT professionals to capture and visualize empirical metrics for the overall performance of an enterprise software implementation, charting user proficiency, engagement, and adoption.

About Knoa Software

Knoa Software delivers enterprise and cloud solutions that generate unique insights for the optimization of the end-user experience for SAP®, Siebel and other platforms. Knoa's patented software provides CIOs and business executives the actionable metrics needed to ensure organizations and end-users realize the full value of their enterprise application investment. Headquartered in Union Square, New York, Knoa’s solutions help hundreds of global corporations and government organizations make impactful, real-time, fact based decisions that enrich and maximize the experience for over a million end-users. For further information visit www.knoa.com or follow us at @knoasoftware on Twitter.

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